produce more. conserve more.

yesterday, on my drive home from work, i switched my radio to NPR to catch Marketplace. typically, i'm not really into economics or business, but i do enjoy Kai Ryssdal. also they play great music in between segments.

anyway, the introductory ad into the show was from Monsanto. as in: "Marketplace is brought to you by Monsanto." which struck my as odd because i just never associated the two things before, but also because apparently Monsanto is committed to "sustainable agriculture" which didn't seem quite right either.

from Monsanto's website:
Monsanto is an agricultural company. We apply innovation and technology to help farmers around the world produce more while conserving more. We help farmers grow yield sustainably so they can be successful, produce healthier foods, better animal feeds and more fiber, while also reducing agriculture's impact on our environment.

that's more or less what the ad before Marketplace said too.

the thing is, as far as i know, that's total bullshit.

Monsanto, before it was all about sustainable agriculture, was better known for producing things like agent orange, polyurethane, and DDT.
and still today they are a major producer of herbicides, the most popular, of course, being roundup.
but to make an even neater package of the whole organization they started bioengineering seeds to be "roundup resistant." meaning, you can buy their seeds and spray the hell out of them with roundup, killing all the weeds, without harming your crops! it's inspired, really.

and so Monsanto produces genetically modified seeds, which turn into genetically modified food. and they love their seeds. they feel a strong attachment to them. so much so that they can claim rights to crops that were not intentionally grown with their seeds. (nature has wind. wind carries seeds.) take, for example, this article from Vanity Fair. this also requires that farmers who do use monsanto seeds need to buy new ones every year. constant profit!

a bigger problem though, as far as i'm concerned, is that, politics aside, we don't really know what eating genetically modified food is going to do to us.


more on that later i guess. i only have so much internet time to devote to random rants.